The abstract: The space environment is impacted from weather to climate scales due to solar inputs, geomagnetic activities, and meteorological perturbations. While the first two aspects of solar-terrestrial relationship are quite intuitive and have been known since the beginning of space age, the last aspect only drawn our attention over recent years. In this talk, we use the gravity waves as an example to illustrate the connection between the lower and upper atmosphere processes. Concentric gravity waves are excited by thunderstorms, propagating through the stratosphere and mesosphere, finally controlling the dynamics and energetics of the upper atmosphere. We combine various techniques to reveal a complete picture of concentric convectively-excited gravity waves using a few NASA satellite sensors and ground-based airglow measurements. Numerical modeling was performed to compare with the observations.

Biography: Dr. Jia Yue received the BS from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2002, the MS from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2004, the PhD from Colorado State University in 2009, in Electrical and Computer Engineering. After 3 years of Advanced Study Program post doctoral research associate at National Center for Atmospheric Research, High Altitude Observatory, in Boulder, he joined the research faculty at Hampton University in 2012. In the fall of 2011, he served as an adjunct professor at Hampton University to teach a graduate level course, being supported by the Diversity Fund from NCAR.

Dr. Yue's research has focused on the theoretical, numerical and experimental investigation of the dynamical, electrodynamical and energetical coupling processes between Earth's lower and upper atmosphere. He tries to answer the critical question: how the space environment is influenced by the meteorological perturbations. He specializes in fluid dynamics, thermodynamics and electrodynamics applied to the upper atmosphere. He also specializes in optical remote sensing techniques (lidars and airglow imagers) to design, develop, deploy and apply the instruments to upper atmosphere studies. He has worked with several global circulation models, such as TIME-GCM and WACCM, to characterize the impacts of gravity waves, planetary waves and tides in the upper atmosphere. He is also interested in satellite remote sensing and data analysis. Dr. Yue has authored or co-authored more than 30 peer reviewed journal papers in the scientific literature. He has been invited to give presentations in a number of scientific meetings. He has served as a Co-PI on the SANNGRIA airborne lidar experiment. He is also a guest scientist at Chinese Science Academy. He is a frequent reviewer for scientific journals such as JGR, GRL, JASTP and a panel reviewer for NASA proposals.

5:45pm reception with refreshements followed by the seminar at 6:00 in Roddy 149